Home From the Range

I wrote on Saturday in My New Gun about my trip to Elk River, Minnesota, along with my son Eric, to buy a new 9 mm. pistol, which Eric gave me for my birthday. We spent several hours at a gun shop operated by a friend of mine, one of the Midwest’s really sophisticated places for firearms training and purchasing. So after test-firing a number of models, I wound up with an ArmaLite AR-24 as a birthday present, and my son bought a Kahr CM 9, a small 9 mm. pistol suitable for concealed carry.

Here is my ArmaLite, a full-sized 9 mm.:

And here is my son’s Kahr, also a 9 mm., but a small pistol intended to be carried:

Today we drove to the Gander Mountain in Lakeville, MN, where we shoot every week or two, to start breaking in our new firearms. So–in response to popular demand, i.e., comments on my last post–how did we do? The ArmaLite was an unqualified success. With the first shot out of the box, I hit the red dot in the center of the bulls-eye. Sure, we started at only 15 feet, but it was an impressive debut. I put 150 rounds or so through the ArmaLite, and it performed spectacularly: consistently accurate, no FTFs, just one FTE. Here are a couple of five-shot groupings I shot at 20-something feet:

Eric’s Kahr wasn’t quite so easy, as you would expect from a small carry piece. It was stiff out of the box, and it has a l-o-o-n-g trigger pull, more so than any other gun we have used. Eric put a similar number number of rounds through the Kahr, and it pretty well brutalized his hand. By the time we were done, however, the Kahr had limbered up and Eric was shooting it with pretty good accuracy. He leavened the Kahr with some rounds through his Ruger. On the whole, it was one of our most fun hours at the range, ever. We cleaned both of our new guns afterward, and will be ready to go again soon!